The
Provisional Confederate Congress convenes. The Confederate States of America is
open for business when the Provisional Congress convenes in Montgomery,
Alabama. The official record read: "Be it remembered that on the fourth
day of February, in the year of our Lord, one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-one, and in the Capitol of the State of Alabama, in the city of
Montgomery, at the hour of noon, there assembled certain deputies and delegates from the several independent South State of North
America..."
The first order of business was drafting a constitution. They
used the U.S. Constitution as a model, and most of it was taken verbatim. It
took just four days to hammer out a tentative document to govern the new
nation. The president was limited to one six-year term. Unlike the U.S.
Constitution, the word "slave" was used and the institution protected
in all states and any territories to be added later. Importation of slaves was
prohibited. Other components of the constitution were designed to enhance the
power of the states--governmental money for internal improvements was banned
and the president was given a line-item veto on appropriations bills.
The Congress then turned its attention to selecting a president. The
delegates settled on Jefferson Davis, a West Point graduate who was the U.S.
Secretary of War in the 1850s and a senator from Mississippi.
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